I am a Honey Bee

All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel

Scrapbooking and Crafts

Project Life 2012: Week 8

I’m in a mad dash at this point to catch up with Project Life.

I took today off from work because our dishwasher has to get repaired and the service window was 10-1. Since that kills getting into work, back home, then back to work, I figured taking the day off would be best. Plus, I am going to a book signing tonight for the new release of The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier.Yes, that means I get to see Ree tonight! Now, I can’t wait to add that to Project Life! Perfection!!!

I spent today working on 3 weeks of PL. I’ll be finishing those weeks soon when I finish them off but for now this post is all about Week 8 (2.19-25). It was such a busy week that had some great moments in there like an Ingrid Michaelson show, a town hall meeting, lots of wine, and a great date night. I actually had Pricer write up some stuff to incorporate his thoughts and I know I will have to do that more often since this is about our ‘adventures’ just as much as it is about my day to day stuff.

Full Spread

Left Side

 

Right Side

 

Project Life 2012: week 7

I felt a bit rushed putting this week together since I’m falling a bit behind. I am making it high priority to get week 8 and 9 done this week… umm yeah, I’ll fit that in while looking at a house, concert, rep dinner, cookbook release party, dinner out… I really have something planned for every night this week. It makes for fun PL documentation but it can make me fall behind. Oh the juggling act!!

Week 7: 

Full Spread

Left Side

 

I like the butterfly embellishment because I first took a piece of patterned cardstock, stamped over it, add dimensionals to the butterfly, put the brad in the middle and then put it on the stamped paper.

Right Side:

 

The letter circles on the central journaling box are cute hole reinforcements for binders that I picked up at the Container Store. They came in a ‘carnival theme‘. Well as cute as they are I am do down right pissed about them. I peeled them off their backing and put them on my edge of my desk to grab easily once I had the cardstock trimmed. I do this for my Thickers as well to plan but thickers are nice sweet alphas that don’t rip the laminate off my perfectly fine Ikea desk like this little SOB’s did. So take my advice and don’t stick them on anything but paper!

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Project Life 2012: Week 6

Oh week 6 of 2012… I loved you so much! So many fantastic things happened! First off I took a cheese making class, then I watch the Giants beat the Patriots (AGAIN!) at the Super Bowl, and heading down to CT to go into NYC to see the parade. At that was just Sunday- Tuesday!

One of the thoughtful things I captured was that Price left a Cadbury Creme Egg in my coat pocket and I discovered it on my way to work. I think moments like that are often overlooked but they really matter. At least they do to me. So that is why I am glad to be doing PL so I could capture that sweet gesture.

Week 6: 

Full Spread

Not sure if I am going to add more photos from the parade on the back side of the 6×12. I keep debating it. We’ll see how I feel looking back at it in another week.

Left Side

 

One of the things I like most about getting up really early for work has been seeing the sunsets. I didn’t so much for adorning that photo besides some alphas and the patterned paper but I love it’s presence on the page.

Right Side

 

I enjoyed playing with the pattern of the paper for my journaling. It made that 2×3 piece of paper a lot more fun.

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Project Life 2012: Week 5

Oh thank you so much Presidents Day! With the extra day off I was able to actually get some scrapbooking in. I was able to do Project Life for Week 5, most of Week 6, and half of week 7. Woohoo!!!

Week 5 was filled with some quality time with my brother and sister, cupcakes, a spiffy new Starbucks Gold card, movie viewing, and being horribly sick. I actually approached the day that I stayed home with ‘sweet, I feel like shit but at least I can scrapbook’ by my body had other plans and I laid on the sofa ALL day. no lie. Clearly I needed the time for my body to recover from the nastiness that was inhabiting my body but it was so disappointing that I didn’t even get to utilize my day off with some fun.

I think my favorite thing about the week is the old timey telephone sticker that I have on the left side page. I wish I could say I strategically put it there but no, I was just tired of journaling so I copped out and decided to put the sticker there so I would not have to write anything in that 3×4 rectangle. In case you were wondering it was going to be about my Monday night being great with picking up a new pair of shoes and having dinner out with Price. I think the phone works just fine instead.

Week 5:

Full Spread

Left Side

 

Right Side

 

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Project Life 2012: Week 4

I am head over heels in love with Project Life.

I have been so busy at work that getting to work on PL has been getting pushed aside a bit but I’m determined to work on it a bit more this week. I am constantly thinking about taking photos, which ones to print, and what size. Plus I think about what goodies can I slip into those pockets. What shall I journal? I can’t see myself getting bored.

Week 4:

Left side

 

Right Side

 

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Harry’s All Grown Up LO- Studio Calico 1.02 Sunday Sketch

1.02.12 Sunday Sketch

One of the things I love most about Studio Calico and their kits are the selection of patterned paper that is included. When I was going through my stash I started to pull out a lot of papers with simple geometries on it. I love simple patterned paper that can be layered well or mashed up with patterns because of similarities with color or shape. When I pulled out the paper that I ultimately used for the main paper I knew it was the best fit because of its similarity to the set design in the photo. It was just meant to be! I pulled solids that matched the photo and main patterned paper for the background banner pieces. The rest of the components where picked from my stash. In fact the white lined piece is from product packing from Studio Calico stamps.

Project Life 2012- Weeks 1-3

I had been hearing about Project Life all over the internet. I was not sure if I should do try to take that on this year. What does a 20-something who works on average 45 hours a week document? What does one who spends most of her time at work do? No kids to snap photos of. Don’t often travel.

But I had to stop thinking of the things I didn’t do and to think about all the things that I had the opportunity to snap pictures of and document. This is my 3rd year doing Project 365 so clearly I can take a photo every day (well, almost every day), so I decided to stretch myself a bit and dive into Project Life for 2012. I see plenty of Boston, I have interesting things going on at work, I go to fun events, I eat out at too many places… so many possibilities

I didn’t go with the typical Project Life path in that I didn’t buy a kit. While the Project Life kits are fantastic, I decided to just buy Photo Pocket Pages – Design F, Photo Pocket Pages – Design B, and Photo Pocket Pages – Design E. I was inspired by Kelly Purkey’s Project Life post she did for her first 2 weeks. It didn’t scream kit to me. I love how things match when they are all from the same release or from a kit but life it not all that matchy matchy so I skipped the cards that typically go in the page protectors. And so I dived right in!

Project Life Cover:

Week One:

Week Two:

Week Three:

It’s not too late to join! Or you can even hold off until your birthday and do a Project Life from birthday to birthday. Or you can start at the birth of a child. Or when you get married to document your first year of married life. Oh the possibilities!

The Boys LO- Studio Calico 12.25 Sunday Sketch

12.25.11 Sunday Sketch

I know that for most cases you should use the rule of 3 in photography and in design. In this case my only 3 were the boys in the picture! The page is divided in half but I think the fact that the photo is not centered helps this layout be so attractive and visually appealing.

I don’t typically stamp, which is strange since I have 150+ stamp sets from Stampin’ Up! and so many from Studio Calico. Plus my massive collection of inks. I am really going to try to make a point of stamping in my layouts this year. I am doing Project Life and I think it will start off being manageable in that and them creep into bigger layouts.

I took this photo after my niece’s first birthday. We celebrated right before Halloween, which is her birthday, which is why one of my nephews is wearing part of his costume. He was showing it off. Sure, I can have them stop and pose for me but whats the fun in always doing that? I want to capture these silly moments. In truth this was the best photo out of a dozen+ I took. The others were dotted with tongues sticking out, wide mouth yells, and rolled eyes. At least they are very lively!

5: Vested LO- Studio Calico 12.18 Sunday Sketch

C&l-sketch

12.18.11 Sunday Sketch

Super Simple. Too simple but it’s done. I used some scraps and whipped this up in just a few minutes. I liked that the sketch gave the opportunity to use up scraps since I have a massive box of them. I love any sketch that promotes that.

I used the 5 buttons to act like that vertical like that runs down the side of the sketch. I was thinking that having the buttons in a row would create that linear element on the page. I used the 5 colorful buttons as a play on the  years I have been with The Big G and the colorful strips I used.

I hope to do a better job this year of staying with the Studio Calico Sunday Sketches as they are being posted, so far so good. As for posting them on the blog… soon, I swear!!

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Giant Santa LO- Studio Calico 12.4.11 Sunday Sketch

Cards

12.4.11 Sunday Sketch

As with the start of every year we make resolutions. I am taking this opportunity to mak one for my blog… I resolve to have more scrapbooking and craft posts. As I made my 2011 recap I realized that the topics of my blog posts were not equally divided. I was noticing that my blog was becoming more and more like a typical food blog, and that is something I don’t want. I love food blogs but I never set out to have one, and I didn’t like how it was evolving towards that. I want to blog about food, obviously, but I want my posts to be equally divided up among the topics of my life, crafting/scrapbooking, and food.

So, I am resolving to actually scrapbook and craft more and to actually put those projects on the blog. I have so many vacation mini books complete that I never posted because I got busy/lazy/bored/etc. I am warning you now that you will be seeing posts related to the mini books I made for Montreal, Charlotte, and Utah in the coming weeks. And I am starting with committing to more scrapbooking posts right now with this one about a giant Santa!

I started out making cards before I began scrapbooking so I was tempted to make a card when I first saw this sketches. But card making is not really my thing anymore so I went with a scrabooking layout instead. I was inspired by the lower right card sketch because I felt it had great composition for a layout. I love when things run up and down a page vertically.

I did this layout quickly and that is just the way I like it! I used a fun glittery patterned paper for the background, which I misted for a little fun. I used an evergreen colored cardstock for the photo border because it was like the trees in the photo. I pulled out that sticker embellishment because it was black and red, like on Santa, and it was circular, similar to the patterned paper. The cardstock embellishment was from an old Cosmo Cricket Christmas themed elements paper that I cut out from its background. I then added an American Crafts pearlized brad to it. A little piece of scrap paper, a tag, alphas, and a ribbon finish it off.

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Last Minute Christmas Gift Tags

These little gift tags are my contribution for Christmas.

Price has been amazing, like always, and has taken over Christmas for us this year. I haven’t been in the Christmas mood so I did squat. We would go Christmas shopping, at his request, and I would just wanted around the store after him. At least I do add some entertainmentto our shopping trips to target. Back to the point… I whipped these cute gift tags up in about 30 minutes today. They are super easy and add a lot of festive details to gifts.

 

I used my Cricut machine to cut out the tags. I used the Doodlecharms cartridge which was the first cartridge I grabbed that had a tag shape. I’m sure there are plenty of other cartridges that have tags. I could have used my punches but I felt the Cricut needed to be dusted off. So you can use a die-cutting machine, punches or just your hands and scissors to get this done. No matter what they are super easy to make and add a lot of festive details to gifts.

Christmas Gift Tags

Supplies

  • patterned or solid paper
  • hole punch and large circle punch
  • several kinds of thin ribbon
  • stickers

Process

  1. Cut out large circles in paper. At the top of the circle cut out another smaller hole with a hand held hole punch.
  2. Cut 6-8 inch pieces of ribbon. Thread 2-3 pieces of ribbon through each hole by folding the ribbon in half and pushing the folded part through the hole. Once you have created a 1/2″ loop push the ribbon ends through the loop and gently tighten.
  3. Add stickers to each tag.
  4. Address each tag and then attach with double sided table.

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Ribbit LO- Studio Calico 4.10.11 Sunday Sketch

–4/10 Studio Calico Sunday Sketch–

This layout has been sitting on my desk at work waiting to for journaling, then for it to be scanned and edited, photographed and edited, and then blogged for months. Well today is the day that it is finally getting done!

Ribbit! I used to only scrapbook big events- birthdays, holidays, parties, etc. But that was back when I had to buy film. Over time when digital cameras got better and developing became super easy, I have changed my outlook on scrapbooking. this is a quirky post about Pricer catching frogs in E’s backyard. What’s the big deal? Well, I want to look back at this page years and years from now and remember that moment. I was something that kinda took my breath away. I was so excited that I had Price repeat this over and over to the poor froggies for my amazement and for photo taking. I feel that I was not properly educated at camp… how did no one teach me how to pick up frogs?!?! Silly I know, but it totally made my morning.

(close up photos to come)

How to catch a frog:

1. Appoach it from the side, be careful not to cast a shadow on it or make sudden movements.

2. Carefully put your hand in the water. Slowly move your hand to be under the frog.

3. Slowly raise your hand under the frog until touching. If all has gone well at this point, lift frog out of the water slowly. Ta-da!!